In parts of New England and the Midwest, apple pie comes with a slice of cheddar, a pairing usually traced to Yorkshire. Vermont’s 1999 state pie act asked for a good-faith effort to serve apple pie with cheddar, milk or ice cream. The rhyme quoted in its defense is in print by 1882, where it is credited to an American.
America’s Test Kitchen described the custom in 2021: order apple pie in New England or the Midwest and the server may ask, “With cheddar or ice cream?” The same article traces the pairing to English fruit pies, notes that parts of Yorkshire prefer Wensleydale, and says Midwestern cooks often bake the cheddar into the crust.
Vermont put the pairing into an act. Act No. 15 of 1999 made apple pie the state pie and the apple the state fruit; both designations stand in the Vermont Statutes as 1 V.S.A. §§ 512 and 513. Section 2 of the act, read aloud by Vermont Public in 2025, directed that when apple pie is served in Vermont, a “good faith” effort be made to serve it with a glass of cold milk, a slice of cheddar weighing at least half an ounce, or a large scoop of vanilla ice cream. That section does not appear in the codified statutes.
The act’s origin was a classroom. Its sponsor, Ed Paquin, told Vermont Public that a teacher of a second- or third-grade class brought him the idea as a lesson in lawmaking. A former representative from that session, Phil Angell, said the law has no force or effect. The sources also differ on the date: the Vermont Statutes give an effective date of 10 May 1999, while the Wisconsin State Law Library gives 1 July 1999.
Wisconsin is often said to require cheese on apple pie. The Wisconsin State Law Library says it does not. A 1935 law required restaurants to serve a small amount of cheese and butter with meals, and it expired in March 1937.
The rhyme appears in print by 1882. In Through America, published in London in 1882, Walter Gore Marshall wrote that in some parts of America apple pie was eaten with cheese, “Yorkshire fashion,” and quoted an American lady: “Apple-pie without cheese / Is like a kiss without a squeeze.” Barry Popik found an 1889 Fort Worth Daily Gazette item crediting the line to the New York editor Park Benjamin. Yorkshire and Sussex both claim it. In Popik’s citations the earliest printed Yorkshire attribution is a 1977 book of rhyme origins, and a 2000 Sussex dialect guide claims it for Sussex. A 1989 Louisville Courier-Journal item called it an English rhyme popular about 1750, a date no cited source supports.